Dumb and Dumber
If you were to catalog some recent cultural phenomena, you might start to draw some conclusions about humans. We have mukbang, or videos in which people eat unbelievable amounts of food in large bites in front of a camera while millions of other people tune in to watch; celery juice, which as it turns out has little bang for the effort but why not work a little harder for your morning water?; the great milk debate, or the lively conversation about whether you can actually call a nut beverage a “milk;” and, well, the vast majority of content on a little platform known as TikTok. And then of course, there are other things: people who poop on desks as a form of protest, the gross misunderstanding of the word “freedom,” and a widespread fear of drag queens, because beauty is not only pain but destruction.
As we were saying, if you were to take note of things like this, you might begin to have some ideas about humanity as a whole. This is why you might not be that surprised to read the findings of a recent study showing that IQ scores in America have declined in three out of four areas for the first time since 1932. The one category they didn’t decline in is spatial reasoning, and if you had to google what that is, it means we are probably getting dumber there too.
Now, you might bristle at this and exclaim, “Who cares about a test! How narrow-minded! My little Rupert spends hours in the backyard building architectural whimsies and then tells me all about his feelings at the end of the day! Why should I worry about a silly little thing like an IQ?” Well, you’re not all wrong. We can’t lose our minds about one measure of intelligence, but as it turns out, the data shows us that IQ does matter in pretty concrete and measurable ways. It even correlates with better physical health, happiness, economic success, and of course, creativity and innovation. According to IQ researcher Stuart Ritchie, “for people who have an IQ of 100, it’s unlikely they are going to be producing major creative accomplishments, setting up the next Facebook or Twitter. If you look at people who have been extremely successful in creative professions — I don’t know the precise number, but there is going to be a cap, and it’s extremely unlikely if you’re below that cap that you’re going to be able to perform at a high creative level.” We may not like this idea, but it is what the research says.
So what’s going on? Why are we dummering? Well, we might not actually be getting dumber after all. The jury is out as to what these IQ scores mean but one theory is that we are simply shifting values as a society and focusing on different areas of learning.
So, what do we do as parents? First, we can hope that our kids start to show signs of needing glasses and stat. The one negative thing that correlates with high IQ is bad eyesight. Beyond that, there’s not much you can do. Just kidding, based on our googling it looks like IQ is genetically determined to a degree, but it’s not entirely fixed – the enriching environment that you are no doubt already providing helps.
Moreover, we can teach our kids all of the other skills that make the difference between becoming a productive member of society and one that wreaks havoc: kindness, paying close attention to the world around them, listening to other people, and understanding that everyone has a unique perspective, staying curious, and most importantly, folding their own laundry. Just kidding on that last one, but hey Alexina can dream.”
For Emily, the big takeaway is that the next time she takes out her contacts before locating her glasses, trips over her cat while searching for said glasses, and finds herself lying flat on the floor in her bathrobe, she’ll think to herself, I might be a genius.
Alexina, on the other hand, has perfect eyesight, so you can draw your own conclusions. She also may have had to google what spatial reasoning is.